


186. flowers that grow in dead bodies

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [285]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 14:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Sarah,” MK says, as soon as Sarah walks in. “How many murderers do you work with, hm? How many monsters whokilled our sisters—”





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you missed the Helsinki comics: MK had a sister named Ania, Helena shot her. MK met her in a hospital room. A few hours after that meeting, Helena snuck into the hospital room, smothered Ania, and stabbed her. Age seventeen. Oof. :(
> 
> Also: this unintentionally treads some similar ground to [Gunpoint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8384050), so please also read that one! It's very good. @yaya if this is _too_ similar please let me know and I'll take it down.

When Sarah gets back to the loft, MK has a gun pointed at Helena’s head. It’s hard to tell which one of the two of them is more uneasy with this situation: Helena looks like she’s going to vomit, but the gun looks so wrong in MK’s hand. Of course: must be harder to trick an assassin into sitting neatly on a bomb for you. MK must have gotten desperate.

Or not.

“Sarah,” MK says, as soon as Sarah walks in. “How many murderers do you work with, hm? How many monsters who _killed our sisters_ —”

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Helena says, in the desperate voice of someone who has said this many times in the last few minutes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“You _shot her_ ,” MK says, “and when that didn’t work you snuck into her hospital room and you – and you—” she stops. Her hand is shaking on the gun. Sarah’s mind blurs, so it’s Helena holding the gun, so it’s Helena in the chair, MK and Ferdinand and Helena and Rachel all playing roulette through Sarah’s brain. How many times has she talked her sisters away from guns.

“MK,” Sarah says, “she’s tellin’ the truth, okay, she doesn’t _do_ that anymore.”

“Really,” MK says. “And what about the men dead in Ming Auto? Hm? What about the Castor clone, I saw him, I saw her agree to kill him—”

“He was a _bad man_ —”

“You were gonna kill Ferdinand with a bloody _bomb_ ,” Sarah says. “Christ, MK, put down the gun. You ever fired a gun before, huh? You really want to kill someone?”

“ _Yes_ ,” MK says, voice strained. “I want justice for Ania.”

“I didn’t know,” Helena says again, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” Sarah risks a step closer. Sarah puts her hand on Helena’s shoulder and Helena leans into it, shaking. She hasn’t even raised her hands up against that gun. She hasn’t done anything.

“Listen to me,” Sarah says quietly. “You listenin’? You want justice for Ania, you find the twats that did this to Helena. Alright? You know they starved her? Locked her in a closet? Told her this was the only bloody way? You’re blamin’ a gun for going off. Come on, Mika. Don’t – don’t. Christ, she’s gonna be a mum. Don’t do this.”

“You were listening,” Helena says, voice almost too soft to be heard.

“’course I was listening,” Sarah says. She reaches her hand out towards the barrel, MK’s shaking barrel. Her other hand is still on Helena’s shoulder and she doesn’t move it. “Mika,” she says. “Don’t kill your sisters.”

MK’s face, going too soft, suddenly goes hard again. “She did,” she says. “Over and over. Not just Ania. Ania and Gabrielle and Sonia and Christina and Harriet and Judith and—”

(Helena wilting under Sarah’s hand)

“—Jacinta, Octavia, Katrina, Marie—”

“Tell her,” Sarah says. “Come on, Helena,” (Eliana, Lara, Aryanna) “I need you to tell her too.”

“I didn’t know,” Helena says. When Sarah looks at her, her eyes are glassy. She’s rocking back and forth. “I didn’t know.”

“Tell her,” Sarah says.

“—Janika—”

“I’m sorry,” Helena says.

“—Danielle—”

“MK,” Sarah says, “come on, how many of those deaths are from this year, will you just – will you just stop _bloody listing_ —”

“Katja,” MK says, and stops. “Katja,” she says again, and stops, and bites her lip, and – oh, she’s crying. Her face is screwed up tight as she tries not to cry, but she’s crying anyways. “Maybe she’s changed,” she says, voice trembling and furious. “I don’t care. Ania could have changed too, but now she can’t. None of them can. I want her to hurt like they hurt.”

“Jesus Christ, MK,” Sarah says, because what else do you say when someone lays their vengeance out in front of you and it just looks sad.

“It doesn’t help,” Helena says, to the surprise of both of the two women standing over her. Sarah rocks back on one foot to look at her, Sarah’s sister, looking at MK with her eyes so sad. “I tried. I went to the people who made me this way, and I said _you did this_ , and I hurt them, and it did not fix me, and Sarah—” she looks at Sarah, and they are both thinking about Amelia, and Sarah can tell “—Sarah knew it didn’t fix me, and Sarah was hurt, and my family was hurt. It could have kept going for always. M-Kay. _Yahnya._ Listen to Sarah. Sarah knows.”

MK is shuddering, now, and Sarah watches her fingers slip and shiver on the trigger of the gun. If one of them dies they will all follow like dominoes; Sarah can feel the weight of that in the air, heavy and sick. It is the wrong time to be proud of Helena. Sarah is proud of her anyways. It doesn’t make that weight any less heavy.

MK’s lower lip is wobbling and she’s hiccupping, the gun shaking. “She lived,” she says, and in a voice that is its own indescribable horror: “Niki _died_.”

She lowers the gun. Sarah can hear the safety clicking back on and her shoulders lower and her hand finds Helena’s shoulder again, just to squeeze it, just so her skin can know that they are all still breathing.

“I miss _Niki_ ,” MK says, voice a wail, and she’s full-on sobbing now. Each sob is its own small scream. Helena’s hand covers Sarah’s hand, Helena’s entire body leaning towards Sarah’s. _You are all I have now_ , breathes a whisper in the back of Sarah’s brain. _I love you_ , and her brain tries to imagine a world where that gun had gone off and Helena had left her, suddenly, and Sarah was alone. Imagine all of Sarah’s sisters gone, and Sarah alone. Would she be holding that gun? Could she?

Oh, she could. Oh, any of them could.

“Mika,” Sarah says, and MK looks at her like a wounded animal. She shudders and shoves the gun in the pocket of her jacket, folds her sleeves of her her hands and scrubs the tears away from her face.

“Don’t,” she says. “Look after your sisters, Sarah, but don’t ask me to be one of them. My sisters are dead. I can’t look at your family without missing mine, and she took – she took one of them away from me, and I can’t forgive her for that.

“I don’t hate you,” she says to Helena, chin stubbornly up, tears streaming in tracks down her face. “But I can’t forgive you, Helena.”

“Okay,” Helena whispers. “MK- _sestra_ —”

“ _Don’t_.”

“If you are ever done. With being lonely. You can make a new family. With us.”

MK’s face crumples up, bitter and angry and lonely, and she shakes her head. She pulls her hood over her face. She ducks out of the loft; Sarah can hear her footsteps running away, running away again into the dark. When she looks down Helena is still holding her hand.

“Kept thinking,” Sarah rasps, “I’d do it. If someone went after you, or Cosima, or Alison. I’d do it.”

Helena leans her weight against Sarah’s legs, where Sarah is still standing over the chair. She doesn’t say anything. They both pretend that she wouldn’t do it too – it has so much more weight, that Helena would do it too. Ania, Gabrielle, Sofia—

“I don’t want anybody to be lonely,” Helena says, voice distant. Sarah lifts her hand from Helena’s shoulder and hugs Helena closer with it, so Helena is full-on leaning against Sarah. They could pull MK out of the dark, but MK has Helena’s gun and Sarah’s urgent need to keep on running. And she doesn’t have the soft parts of either of them to balance. She put all those soft parts in another person, and then that person burned up and where was she? Where was she?

It’s selfish, isn’t it, to hug Helena tighter and say _I’m glad we’re not lonely_ , but Sarah is a selfish person and Sarah wants to do it anyways. She wants it; she doesn’t do it. From the way Helena is looking at her she thinks Helena knows what she wants anyways.

“Thank you,” Helena says quietly, “for saying it. That. I am better now.

“I try,” she adds. “I try very hard, _sestra_ , I promise this.”

“I know,” Sarah says.

“I can tell,” Sarah says.

“You’re alright, Helena,” Sarah says. “You’re fine.”

Helena sighs, and closes her eyes. Sarah watches Helena keep on breathing, looks to where the door is open just a crack. She could close it, but she won’t. She’ll leave it open a little bit. Just in case anything wants to come in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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